Inquisition unleashed to weed out Vatican leakers

Tom Kington, Rome -Apr 28, 2012

VATICAN employees who have been leaking embarrassing letters about corruption and nepotism in the tiny city state are to be hunted down by a crack squad of cardinals led by a senior member of the religious group Opus Dei.

Irritated by the anonymous release of documents to the press this year, Pope Benedict has named Cardinal Julian Herranz, 82, to lead a three-man team which will haul in members of staff for questioning and rifle through files until they catch the perpetrators of what has been dubbed ''Vatileaks''.

A statement on the front page of the Vatican's daily newspaper warned the team had a full ''pontifical mandate'' to ''shed complete light'' on whistleblowers, who have lifted the lid on alleged theft and false accounting.

Cardinal Herranz was a long-time personal secretary to Josemaria Escriva, the canonised founder of Opus Dei, which has been accused of excessive secrecy for its strict control over members and undue influence within the Vatican. Cardinal Herranz has insisted that Opus Dei has ''no hidden agenda'' and is only interested in ''the message of Christ''.

His squad, which met for the first time this week, is one of three inquiries under way at the Holy See into the leak of letters in January and February that discuss the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee in 1983, the likely date of Benedict's death and an internal row over how transparent the Vatican bank should be as it shrugs off allegations of money laundering.

The most shocking revelations are in a letter addressed to the Vatican's secretary of state by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the deputy governor of Vatican City, denouncing the signing of inflated contracts with friendly companies. As proof, Archbishop Vigano said he had discovered that the price of the Christmas nativity scene in St Peter's Square was €250,000 ($A320,000) more than it should have been. One priest, who the archbishop describes as ''vulgar'' and ''arrogant'', had been responsible for nepotism, fake invoicing and €70,000 going missing, he claimed.

After telling all, Archbishop Vigano was reassigned to the US as papal nuncio, an appointment he describes as punishment for his honesty in a letter to the Pope in which he begs for a commission to look into his claims.

Since then, the Vatican has focused on finding out who leaked the letters it describes as ''biased and trivial''.

Gianluigi Nuzzi, the Italian journalist who first broadcast the contents of Archbishop Vigano's letters, said: ''I hope the Vatican employs the same tenacity in improving transparency at its bank and in reopening the Orlandi kidnapping case as it has with this inquiry.''

Employees could be fired or face canonical punishment if they are clerics.